(1) Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a system for modeling strategic network formation and, more particularly, to a system for modeling strategic network formation involving information sources, aggregators, and consumers.
(2) Description of Related Art
The World Wide Web offers consumers access to an unprecedented quantity of information. Consumers wading into this flood of information have found that negotiating its waters can be overwhelming. This difficulty has presented the opportunity for the rise in prominence of a third-party role of a web site or computer software, referred to as the aggregator, who can intercede on behalf of the consumer to mediate the stream of information that has traditionally flowed uninhibited from the producer (source) to the consumer.
Network formation games that pertain to the production and consumption of information includes the work of Galeotti and Goyal (see the List of Incorporated Literature References, Literature Reference No. 4), who model information as a public good that agents can either produce for themselves or acquire by linking to others. They show that networks with core-peripheral structures tend to arise in Nash equilibrium, wherein agents in the periphery link to agents in the core who provide the information. Galeotti and Goyal found that, in addition to information producers, the core can also include non-producing agents that link to multiple producers (essentially, aggregators) who then attract links from the other non-producing agents in the periphery.
Zhang and van der Schaar (Literature Reference No. 8) studied a variant of the model presented in Literature Reference No. 4 in which, instead of agents receiving utility from access to information, individual agents receive a utility based on the number other agents they get to receive information from them. In their model, every agent is endowed with some quantity of information, and agents form links to push their information to others. Zhang and van der Schaar (Literature Reference No. 8) show that, like Galeotti and Goyal (see Literature Reference No. 4), networks with core-peripheral structure arise in Nash equilibrium.
Furthermore, Dellarocas, Katona, and Rand (see Literature Reference No. 2) developed a strategic model of network formation that allows them to look directly into the tension between information sources and aggregators. Their analysis focuses on examining how the presence of aggregators affects the information landscape on the World Wide Web, with a particular focus on the market conditions that arise in such a setting. Dellarocas et al. (see Literature Reference No. 2) developed an elaborate model that captures many of the intricacies of the content marketplace that presently exists on the World Wide Web. Each of the methods above exhibit limitations that make them incomplete.
Thus, a continuing need exists for a simplified model which captures key aspects of the information ecosystem on the World Wide Web.